Globally, 2 billion people remain unbanked and women lag behind men in terms of access to formal accounts, credit and savings products. FinEquity, a global community to advance women's financial inclusion, provides CGAP facilitated platforms to share experiences, identify key challenges, document and discuss emerging good practices, and solve common problems associated with increasing equitable access to and use of a broad range of financial services.

Our members include researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and donors around the world working on financial inclusion in promoting economic empowerment for women.

FinEquity's steering committee consists of a core group of “champions” who guide our goals and strategy, outlined in our charter. Champions also help to implement an overarching work plan. Working Groups convene by theme and determine how to address knowledge gaps, as well as enhance collaboration among members in assigned themes. The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) facilitates FinEquity.

Read this primer to get answers to frequently asked questions, and learn more about all the different ways that you can engage with us. We look forward to your participation!

Meet Rosita Najmi is member of our Champions. Based out of Washington, DC, Rosita joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2015 to advance digital financial services for the poor and has led investments on regtech, de-risking of cross-border payments, US government engagement, and advocacy for women’s financial inclusion and economic empowerment, among other areas. Rosita served on the team that developed the strategy for the foundation’s women’s economic empowerment body of work.

This gathering of the WFI COP promoted learning around new and innovative practices and solutions to increase women’s financial inclusion, and updated Working Group strategic priorities, plans and activities.

The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women presents encouraging evidence that its Road to Growth model delivered significant impact for women entrepreneurs in Nigeria. Important success factors include the blended learning approach, which combined in-class training with online learning, coupled with the creation of physical and digital networks.

This paper, produced by cenfri in partnership with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), explores the effectiveness of various behavioural interventions that could reasonably be applied by financial services providers. It first examines the evidence on interventions that influence savings, credit, payments and insurance decisions by all adults. It then focuses specifically on interventions that show promise to improve service delivery for women.